


Dig Here Said the Angel

by MiriFern



Series: Jeffrey Dahmer In the Twilight Zone [5]
Category: Dahmer (2002), Jeffrey Dahmer - Fandom, My Friend Dahmer (2017)
Genre: Although a few lines do rhyme, Free Verse, I'm not happy with the title, Poetry, narrative poem, poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 00:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15718227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriFern/pseuds/MiriFern
Summary: “Doubtless he is mad,” they said.“Doubtless he will hang.”But a murderer of so many must be found sanebefore they can agree he be hanged.





	Dig Here Said the Angel

_I. “Sixteen Locks”_

On the twenty second of June,  
the year of our Lord 1632:  
They roped him in Wiltshire  
Upon the rolling hills of chalk and grass  
Strung up and hung cross the back  
of the deputy’s dun mare.  
He gave a shout when they caught him  
and wept a torrent along the way  
to the county jail.

“This is the man,” said the one who got away.  
“He offered up his hospitality  
to a fellow down on his luck,  
Fed me with strong drink until  
I could scarcely stand.  
Then I saw there were sixteen locks upon his door  
and knew he meant the doing of me.  
But I fled his crooked house in the hills  
hoofing my way to Salisbury.  
There I found the deputy  
and led him to the house.  
The killer invited us in  
but I would not go till the deputy beseeched me,  
seeing as he had no companion  
to cover his blind side.  
We searched the house and,  
finding a skull amid wine skeins,  
gave chase as he fled.”

“A play worthy of the London theater,” said the sheriff,  
grumbling around his pipe.  
“I bet this lad is a locksmith by trade  
seeing as he can afford sixteen locks on one entrance.”

_II. “The Rack”_

Three days passed in harrow,  
yet they still didn’t know his name.  
While workers gathered at his house  
to examine the disturbed earth for human remains,  
he languished in his cell  
eating little, saying nothing  
Save that he had killed seventeen people.  
They laid him out upon the rack  
Stretched from wrist to ankle  
Taut as a bowstring  
and screaming like the loosed arrow.  
“I have no kin,” he cried.  
“I am no one.”  
But from cracked lips they pried  
a name, Jeffrey Dahmer  
Born of an Irish mother  
and an alchemist father,  
both dead and buried.  
“No one else,” he pleaded.  
The clink of chains—  
“One more.”  
A brother in Little Gidding was called for.

They raised bones enough from the dust behind the house  
to give rise to legends like Bluebeard.  
The name, long stricken from monuments and memory,  
of the Baron de Rais was spoken again  
in hushed tones, though conspicuous  
as wind through palace parapets.  
“Doubtless he is mad,” they said.  
“Doubtless he will hang.”  
But a murderer of so many must be found sane  
before they can agree he be hanged.  
Many feared he was no madman,  
but possessed by nomadic devils said to roam the land.

“Then let such spirits be dispelled,” his brother pleaded.  
“Give him over to a pious priest to be blessed and prayed for.  
I knew him when his soul was not so blackened  
I know this part of him yet survives.  
He is of Bemerton, so get a priest from Bemerton.  
There is one who is well spoken of at the church of St. Andrew  
He speaks to God as one who really believes,  
and his business in the world is with Him.  
Heart-work and heaven-work make up all he does.”

_III. “Country Parson”_

“Holy Mr. Herbert” the people called him  
half in reverence and half in jest.  
A Welshman nobly born,  
once he’d held the venerated position  
of orator at Cambridge,  
basking in the scholar’s glory that was  
the reign of King James.  
Alas, Mr. Herbert’s ambitions fled three years ago.  
Some said it was the death of the king—  
others, the death of his beloved mother.  
Regardless, it was so  
that he resigned himself to holy orders,  
a wife, and three adopted nieces.  
Never once did he speak of his previous life,  
but they could all smell the privileged airs  
that bore him hence. The poor fool thought  
he was still speaking to clever folk  
or else why would he care about them?  
Indeed, he was known to take communion directly to the sick—  
Perhaps that’s how he came by consumption himself.

He was yet alive when they sent for him,  
and seemed to be getting well again.  
No blood issued from his lips  
and his breath was not so pained.  
In the Salisbury jailhouse  
they led him to the murderer’s cell;  
he was by then so broken and bloody  
his features one could hardly tell.  
But blue were the eyes that gazed upon  
the overqualified country parson,  
and blue was the blood upon the stone floor  
in principle, if nothing more.

_IV. “Dig Here”_

“Why did you kill?” the parson asked  
as soon as they were alone.

Dahmer replied: “I know not  
myself, my heart, or my soul.  
At times I don’t remember what I’ve done,  
and strange thoughts fly into my head like arrows  
launched from I know not whence,  
with no goal I can see but to torment me  
and bring suffering to strangers.  
It is bloodlust, my lord,  
Slavering, savage lust for bodies  
and hunger for flesh.  
I strike the board and cry, No more!  
But who hears me?  
Surely not God, silent in His Heaven;  
mayhap the Devil, brooding in the dark.  
Did your brethren see through me?  
No, they saw another of the flock.  
I went to church, I prayed in the temple,  
I sang at Salisbury Cathedral  
and read my Bible into the morning hours.  
But there was no relief,  
No ceasefire in Hell, or calvary from Heaven.  
Would Christ have saved me from myself  
if I had flogged my own back till the rivers ran red  
flooded with my blood?  
Or if I hung a millstone round my neck  
and drowned in the depth of the sea?  
To stop one’s self from ever sinning is itself a sin!  
Save your breath, Calvinist  
I am already damned.”

“That may be so,” said the parson.  
“But no man has yet seen Judgement.  
I am no better than you—  
ah, do not start so. True, I am no murderer  
but my sins are too many to name.”

“Prig! Lying prig!” the prisoner’s jaws snapped.  
“Spit in my eye and pour salt in my wounds  
but don’t insult me.”

George Herbert drew himself up—  
Then dropped suddenly to his knees.  
“I am of the church, I built the temple  
I walked twice a week to Salisbury Cathedral  
I made music there with the choir and musicians.  
I saw you but once, yet I remember  
You sat alone in a pew at the back.  
If I could have seen behind your eyes  
I would have shouldered your burdens  
But no one knows anyone’s heart  
Not even their own.  
Do not call me priggish because I am a priest—  
I am meant to be God’s mouthpiece on earth  
Yet my soul draws back, _guilty_ at every turn.  
I am unworthy, unkind, ungrateful  
and yes, self-righteous among men doomed to die  
as surely as I.  
But not beside you.  
If you did all that I did,  
Filling your cup to the brim with love  
and yet had it dashed to the ground,  
We are equals.  
Do not murder yourself for murdering,  
The time for that is long past.  
Know you not, who bore the blame?”

“I know,” sighed the prisoner.  
“But I don’t understand _why_  
I was chosen for this.”

“And I have no answer to the question  
of why you had so much heaped upon you.  
You suffer like Job, fall like Eve—  
Your sorrows are common to every man,  
even if your crimes are not.  
All sins are unique,  
Yet all are sin,  
And none are too great for Christ,  
Though the cross is always too heavy for us to bear.  
I see all men in you,  
and you in all men  
The world will call you worm,  
Lash you with their tongues,  
Break your body on the rack  
And tomorrow, deprive you of life,  
But the Lord of Heaven will never disinherit you.  
If all this is true, does it matter why?”

“If they find me sane, I will die.  
But if they find me insane, they will lock me away  
Somewhere where there is no light of day  
No company but the ants  
Choking on hard bread and foul water  
Cold stone to feel, mold to breathe  
Rats scratching in the shadows—”

“If they find you insane, I will visit you twice a week  
I’ll bring my lute and sit outside your door  
And you will forget these things  
if only for an hour.”

_V. “Trial”_

The trial lasted but a day.  
A confession had been given, an inquiry made  
The victims all mercifully identified.  
Present at court were  
Tens of mothers and fathers,  
Scores of brothers and sisters,  
A dozen weeping widows clad in black,  
With small children clasping the hands of stony guardians,  
Rendered orphans at the hands of the murderer.  
They brought Dahmer forth in chains  
and so the spittle flew  
with barbed insults and demands made  
for him to suffer sixteen deaths.  
“Seventeen,” he quietly corrected.  
And the families threatened to riot.

The judge called for order in the court.  
The yellowed bones were presented,  
The lawyers argued briefly, not for guilt  
but for his sanity.  
The jury departed to deliberate,  
And came back after only an hour.  
Sane was the verdict,  
Jeffrey Dahmer was not a madman.  
The gallows had already been built  
So it was decided he should die then and there.

_Then the parson need not visit a cold, dank cell,_ he thought.  
_Though I wouldn’t be troubled if he visited my grave every now and then_  
_If he can manage._  
But on the way to the hangman  
Someone in the crowd leaped forward  
Wielding a club, he struck Dahmer over the head  
Before he was apprehended, the prisoner lay dead.  
The people’s cheers were loud  
For the tables had turned  
and they were, if for a moment,  
as bloodthirsty as he.

“We built the gallows for nothing,” the deputy remarked.  
He was still haunted by Dahmer’s weeping confession  
as he rattled on the back of his horse.

“Well, put it in the record that he was hanged,” said the sheriff,  
weary of the whole affair. “It’s true, in a sense.  
Have you heard about the Bemerton parson?  
He shouldn’t have gone down in the jails—  
They say he’s taken ill again.”

So it was written in the books  
That a murderer of sixteen men was hanged  
On the twenty-sixth of June, 1632  
But let it be said that the records are written  
To be full of fury and opinion,  
In the end, signifying nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Annotations:  
> -The English county of Wiltshire is known for having "chalk" a peculiar kind of limestone, underneath the topsoil.  
> -Little Gidding was a nearby semi-monastic religious community.  
> -"Bluebeard" is a fairytale/legend about a woman who marries a grotesque nobleman who is later revealed to have killed all his previous wives in a grotesque manner.  
> -The Baron de Rais, or Gilles de Rais, was a 15th century French nobleman known for having fought alongside Joan of Arc, and for having been tried and executed for the sexually-motivated murders of several hundred children. He is believed to have been the inspiration for Bluebeard.  
> -To be "blue-blooded" one must be of noble birth.  
> -"Thoughts fly into my head like arrows" is a JD quote found somewhere in _The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer_ by Brian Masters.  
>  -Whereas "slavering lust" was from a taped interview with JD, I don't remember which.  
> -"I strike the board and cry, No more." Opening line of George Herbert's "The Collar".  
> -"hung a millstone round my neck..." see Matthew 18:6  
> -A Calvinist is one who believes in the concept of predestination, where a few people were "elected" by God to receive salvation at the beginning of time, and all other persons are damned.  
> -"Yet my soul draws back...", "unkind, ungrateful", and "Know you not, who bore the blame?" see George Herbert's "Love III".  
> -Dahmer described having nothing to do but watch ants crawl across the floor of his cell while awaiting trial.  
> -George Herbert died of tuberculosis in March of 1633, aged 39.


End file.
